A piece on the notorious conspiracy theory website Infowars.com blatantly lied about the site’s promotion of the so-called “pizzagate” conspiracy theory, after the site’s creator Alex Jones deleted evidence he promoted the conspiracy.



In a February 24 article for Infowars.com, editor Kit Daniels falsely claimed that “the discussion around Pizzagate largely occurred on Reddit, 4chan and Twitter -- but not Infowars,” in an attempt to rebut claims made by former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta during a discussion with John Heilemann.



In fact, Alex Jones promoted the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory on his radio show, urging his listeners “to go investigate it for yourself.” Jones urged his audience to “go to the report, Pizzagate Is Real,” and stated “Something’s going on. Something’s being covered up. It needs to be investigated”:

ALEX JONES: Now I want to be clear. Not everybody in the WikiLeaks is involved in this. Clearly. You have to go investigate it for yourself. But I will warn you, this story that’s been the biggest thing on the internet for several weeks, pizzagate as it’s called, is a rabbit hole that is horrifying to go down.



[…]



Let’s go ahead and go to the report, Pizzagate Is Real. The question is: How real is it? What is it? Something’s going on. Something’s being covered up. It needs to be investigated. To just call it fake news -- these are real WikiLeaks. This is real stuff going on.

During that broadcast, Infowars producer Jon Bowne said Clinton allies were “using a code to communicate child sex trafficking as casually as ordering a pizza,” and Alex Jones suggested he would be “getting on a plane” to visit Comet Ping Pong” because “it’s just like Bohemian Grove and stuff, I can’t just say something and not see it for myself. They go to these pizza places, there’s like satanic art everywhere.” Infowars has additionally published articles headlined “Pizzagate: The Mysterious Death Of A Human Trafficking Investigator,” and “Pizzagate Is Global.”

One week after Jones’ promoted the “pizzagate” conspiracy, gunman Edgar Welch told The New York Times that he listens to Alex Jones, and reportedly went to Comet Ping Pong with an assault rifle to investigate the conspiracy. Days later, Alex Jones attempted to scrub pizzagate content from his website, and downplayed his role in promoting the conspiracy theory, while stating Welch was an “admitted actor,” claiming “the whole thing is classic scripting. I’m not saying it’s scripted -- it has all the telltale signs, they’ve been caught doing it before.”